Beetroot

Morphling

Morphling is an interactive installation covered by a biodegradable 'lick-able' skin that breathes, smells, moves and ages. The main ingredient of Morphling’s skin is five hundred beetroots, harvested from Dutch farmlands.


Morphling invites you on an inverted space expedition of our bodies. Magnifying the galaxy we inhabit, Katrijn Westland sees our bodies less as shells and more as constellations of microbial life. Performing bodies continuously inhabit the installation interacting with Morpling’s ‘microbial constellation’. Each of the inhabitants brings a different character of movement to the work.

Morphling animates us to reimagine our bodies as interconnected systems which are able to encapsulate other matter or beings. Blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, self and other, invites us to discover ourselves not as one, but as many.

Making process

After the harvest, the beetroots are sliced and dried for several hours. Once the drying process is finished, the beetroots are ground into a fine powder. Together with the rest of the ingredients, the powder is mixed into a paste. Then, layer by layer, the paste is thinly spread onto a fabric canvas. When dry, these layers can be pulled from the canvas and Morphling’s skin is formed.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.